Increase tobacco tax to discourage smoking

December 9 , 2015

Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga with Komeito Vice Representative Furuya and others Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga (center) with Komeito Vice Representative Furuya (second from right) and others

On December 8, Noriko Furuya, Komeito Deputy Chief Representative and head of the party’s committee on cancer prevention, and Akiko Santo, her counterpart at the Liberal Democratic Party, submitted a petition calling for increasing the tobacco tax to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga at the Prime Minister’s Office.

According to a report, some 130,000 people have died from diseases related to cigarette smoking in Japan in 2007. In the petition, Komeito and the LDP—the two partners in Japan’s ruling coalition government—stated that Japan must promote stricter measures to prevent such diseases since the nation is a signatory of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). The petition also noted that building smokeless environments is an important part of hosting the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Currently, a pack of cigarettes costs about 400 yen in Japan, which is one-third the price charged in the US and UK. The two coalition parties suggested increasing the price to 1,000 yen per pack by levying a stiffer tobacco tax at both the national and local level in 2016. They also pointed out to revise the tax on nasal snuff tobacco.   

Furuya emphasized that increasing the tobacco tax would encourage people to stop smoking.